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Blog Anonymously

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Re: Blog Anonymously

#391

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jaccarmac wrote: post #367
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not feel unsafe around someone who voted for Trump, though I might question their morals. I would not feel unsafe around someone who voted for Hillary, though I might question their judgment. I would feel unsafe around someone whose political views were that you should be fired if you voted for Trump. (I would also feel unsafe around someone whose political views were that you should be fired if you voted for…

Do you grant that some people may feel differently about the politics of Trump, or should we shape our cultural norms (after all, that's what we are talking about when we mention "cancel culture") around what YOU think is reasonable or unreasonable politics?

You seem to be implying that we can't shape our cultural norms about what I think is reasonable. That's fair. But we also can't shape them around what people think is reasonable who feel threatened by Trump.

I get that some people feel differently about Trump's politics. (Hey, I feel mighty concerned about his politics.) That's why the standard of what's "reasonable behavior" can't be shaped by how everybody feels. Otherwise, it just turns into a contest to see who can proclaim that they feel what they feel more strongly than the other side.

At some point, some element of determining what is rationally justified by the circumstances has to come into play. But that's hard, because everyone has radically different ideas of what "the circumstances" actually are.

Failing that, the only thing left is existing norms of behavior. And getting someone fired for their politics is well outside of that.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#392

Post by lliamander »

jaccarmac wrote: post #382
lliamander wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, deplatforming people and removing their resources does work in some cases. In what sense do you mean they "work"? > Civility fetishism is an entirely different conversation. Suffice it to say that I think it's distinctly less valuable than commonly portrayed. One could say the same about the fetishism of "safety".

> In what sense do you mean they "work"? They reduce the ability of extremists to radicalize young people, for example. On a platform level, banning certain actors makes my life better because less fake news will show up in my feed. ETA: It also denies people some amount of income in many cases, now that platforms are often monetized. > One could say the same about the fetishism of "safety". Yes, you could. But I bel…

> They reduce the ability of extremists to radicalize young people, for example.

Hm... I'm not going to say the problem of radicalization isn't real, it most certainly is, but I think we need to have a clear definition of what qualifies as radicalization.

> On a platform level, banning certain actors makes my life better because less fake news will show up in my feed.

That's a problem of filtering tools and suggestion algorithms.

> ETA: It also denies people some amount of income in many cases, now that platforms are often monetized.

I don't see that as a terminal goal.

> Yes, you could. But I believe that acting to protect one's safety is more justifiable than acting to protect "civility". Both are subjective, but the former is more personal.

Acting against legitimate threats to one's safety does absolutely override concerns of civility. But there are standards for determining whether an alleged threat is credible. Claiming that one's safety is threatened by a coworker merely because they voted for Trump (the initial example that waheoo provided) is absolutely ludicrous.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#393

Post by type0 »

> Never use a custom domain name - these require some of your personal information when being registered. Even with whois privacy protection, certain law enforcement can demand for these credentials.

Not just law enforcement, shady companies like FB all try to get their greasy hands on that info. Panopticon is one closed circle.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#394

Post by s1artibartfast »

kbenson wrote: post #186
Jolter wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t sound familiar at all to me. Can you give an example of such an incident?

There are links sprinkled all throughout the comments of instances of people having views erroneously attributed to them and the public pressure causing them to lose their jobs. Here's one I just read.[1] How prevalent these are, and whether they outweigh any positive effects of the behavior (or if you even believe there are positive effects) is probably a more nuanced question. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a…

Even ignoring the erroneous attributions, I wan't the right to voice a controversial (or even wrong) opinion. Afterall, how else would I engage and learn that I am wrong.

It seems that the expectation is increasingly that the only evidence people should need to overturn their personal opinions is the fact that they are not in the majority.

Similarly, it seems that very little leeway is given to those who changed their minds, even before their controversial opinions came to light.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#395

Post by claudiawerner »

dnissley wrote: post #238
hakka-nyu-su wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally able to be organized against. And in many cases, the same celebrities are still able to have a career that is sometimes even boosted by their ability to campaign against "cancel culture" generally. Do you have any books/articles/resources for thinking about "cancel cu…

Regular folks who were "cancelled": - David Shor - Justine Sacco - James Damore - Adria Richards A full list would be a mile long

>- James Damore

Regular as compared to a celebrity (well, I suppose he is a celebrity now on HN and tech places on Reddit), but being regular is no panacea agaianst criticism.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#396

Post by bborud »

dlkf wrote: post #27
k3liutZu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He does advise to use google translate to move the content from the original language to a different one and then back to alleviate this.

I think this is a great first stab at the problem, but for two reasons I think a robust solution needs more work: - The first is that, as someone else pointed out, Google is almost certainly logging your translation queries. - Secondly, even if you do it offline (as someone else suggested) the approach itself might not work. Success in linguistic forensics isn't based (as we might naively assume) on catching obscure…

In forensic linguistics you typically measure a lot of metrics, not just word frequencies, use of punctuation and whitespace, sentence lengths and structures etc. Attribution also isn't the only use of forensic linguistics. You can also look at influences, deas, people, publications etc. For instance in order to infer something about the reader, analyze influence networks etc.

I got interested in forensic linguistics many years ago when an article in a somewhat shady publication mentioned me. I got curious and started reading anything I could find on the topic. I was eventually able to identify the author, but mostly by tricking him to admit it after I had a ranked list of candidates. He was second on a list of about 4-5 people (out of a candidate set of perhaps 300). Not half bad for the rather crude methods I used. I was rather pleased with myself.

I've used similar techniques later to look at influence networks in companies.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#397

Post by surround »

asdfman123 wrote: post #362
surround wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why though? How is there any benefit to using a VPN with TOR? Especially when it’s obvious that there’s a lot of risk involved.

Because it shields the fact you're going through Tor. Tor network traffic alone is a red flag that you're doing something shady, even if it isn't sufficient proof. A comical example is when a Stanford student used Tor to call in a bomb threat to get out of an exam. Turns out he was one of two people on the entire campus network using Tor. The police talked to him and he admitted to it. (Side note: if you're going to…

> The most common rationale behind this setup is to hide Tor usage from an ISP or circumvent censorship of the Tor network. This is unnecessary as you can hide Tor usage and circumvent censorship by using bridges. You can either use the bridges that are included in Tor Browser for this, or request other bridges from in any of the ways described here. A bonus of bridges is that they don’t leave a money trail, which VPNs often do. [...] Even if you were to end up on a watch list, it would be a uselessly large list as Tor has more then 2 million daily users. It strikes me as very naive to imagine that someone powerful enough to trace you over the Tor network will be stopped by a $5 a month VPN service.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#398

Post by 627467 »

Another way to blog anonymously (depending on how you connect to the service) is to use telegra.ph: telegram's minimal blogging tool that doesn't require an account.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#399

Post by rcoveson »

sophacles wrote: post #316
shpongled wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute insanity right here.

It is pure ridiculousness indeed. Imagine holding people accountable for their actions... that would be personal responsibility and is 100% unacceptable to the current powers that be.

I'm curious, why do you use Sophocles as your name? He doesn't hold up well by modern moral standards.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#400

Post by Klinky »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #372
Klinky wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Threats of all kinds are made every day, and often in completely legal contexts. Threats of violence are often less tolerated, but even in some contexts protected under freedom of speech.

Take care not to conflate free speech principles with legal protections for free speech.

It sounds like you want people to censor themselves in a way you find appropriate, based on what you believe freedom of speech means.
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